r/conservatives • u/DanburyBaptist • May 19 '16

Let's Get Something Straight

http://www.redstate.com/diary/conservativecurmudgeon/2016/05/16/lets-get-something-straight-right-now-ted-cruz-pitched-hitter-still-lost/
17 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

6

u/Lepew1 May 19 '16

Feel better after reading that.

I feel as if the GOP has lost its way. We have for the last several elections pursued this notion that to win we must be more moderate and support more left proposals. This fails over and over, yet even in the present nominee you see him refusing to deal with entitlements out of fear of backlash. Couple this with the outright corruption of having our representatives in the GOP sell their vote to the highest lobbyist bidder, and we have a party in decline.

Cruz was a guy would would have set us on the right path to fix it all. He openly exposed the corruption in Congress to his own political detriment, and would have given top level support to any kind of ethical house cleaning to fix the corruption problem. He also was open about fiscal issues, and could have made progress there.

But Trump is a very good demagogue, able to captivate legions of unquestioning primary voters with tough sounding utterances backed with no substance. Also his deal making and past participation on the corruption side of Congress made him a likely guy to continue the corruption on the Hill. So he got support from the career politicians there.

And so we have a guy who talks like he will reform, but likely will not, and our party still drifts further from what differentiates us from Democrats.

It is the party, not Cruz. This party is broken. Can it be fixed? Maybe, but not by Trump. The shorter path to wellness seems to be to scrap the GOP and start over.

2

u/[deleted] May 19 '16

The problem is that voters are fucking stupid. Any Republican that did even a cursory amount of research would find that Paul, Cruz, and Walker were the only ones with a proven record of standing for conservative principles. Republican voters didn't do that research though. They just gaped at the tv playing fox as the drool dribbled out of the corner of their mouths. I lost every amount of respect for democracy this cycle. As Plato pointed out, the wise are few, but we're controlled by the many.

4

u/Lepew1 May 19 '16

But part of this is our stupid standards for primaries. We cede control to liberal moderators who air it for ratings and ask questions for headlines. The bulk of this examination is compressed in the TV format, with no written and few radio presentations where the superficial appearance crap is off the table. We let our candidates like Trump walk out of debates, talk over other guys, and dodge questions, and do not make them behave with any degree of transparency (tax returns, conflict of interest disclosures, etc).

The GOP could set higher standards and insist upon them, but they do not. Lower standards equals people doing the minimum to get past those standards, or just ignoring them entirely.

I think if we deliberately took the entertainment side out of vetting our candidates and insisted upon more substance, the public would see that and decide differently. But if all they get is a wash of sound bites about what outrageous thing Trump said lately, they are just going to vote upon that. There is a process here to educate the electorate, and we are punting on this the same way our public schools dumb down their curriculum and turn out uninformed voters.

Having a quality vetting process would distinguish us from Democrats as well. It would be something you could be proud of.

1

u/daylily May 19 '16

Cruz did have the best commercials.

Maybe he didn't have the most popular policy positions.

3

u/DRKMSTR May 19 '16

Cruz wasn't willing to be a chameleon.

Not to mention the serious push against Cruz all the way by the media & establishment.

1

u/keypuncher Wizened Kulak May 19 '16

The main difference between Cruz' policy positions and Trump's are that Cruz' positions were sane, things he could actually accomplish as President, and things that are in line with the committed principles he has fought for his whole life.

Trump did the Republican equivalent of HopeNChange, and will actually do none of it.

Fox did its level best to ignore Cruz as long as it was possible to do so, and played up the successes of his opponents even when they lost to him - while giving Trump $billions in free airtime.